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Conference explores thorny issue of relations between Christianity and Islam

By James Solheim
2001-350
12/12/2001

[Episcopal News Service] Over a year ago plans were laid for a conference on reconciliation in the conflict between Christianity and Islam in many parts of the world--but those plans assumed a new urgency in the wake of the terrorist attacks against the World Trade Centers and the Pentagon.

By the time a hundred participants gathered December 2 at Kanuga Center in North Carolina, bombs were falling in Afghanistan, suicide bombers in Jerusalem were killing dozens of people, and there was fresh violence against Christians in the Sudan, Nigeria, Pakistan and Indonesia.

In an intense three-day conference, sponsored by Kanuga and the Community of the Cross of Nails, participants grappled with underlying causes of these conflicts and explored possibilities for reconciliation. 'I think the main issue for us in the United States is understanding the tension between the mainstream of Islam and the extremists,' the Rev. Spenser Simrill of St. Luke's in Atlanta said in an interview with the press. 'That's the work we have to do in our home churches--to educate people who are confused.'

Many participants confessed that they shared that confusion and were grateful for the presence of several Islamic scholars who patiently took them through the basic tenets of the faith and suggested some directions for dialogue--and possible reconciliation.

What is Islam?

Dr. Liyakat Takim, who has served as imam at a mosque in Toronto and taught at the University of Miami and now at Denver, began with a video introduction to Islam and then described the five tenets common to the faith: complete submission to God, prayer five times a day, fasting, alms-giving and pilgrimage to Mecca.

The challenge in relations between Islam and Christianity, he said, is to recognize that we are already related with a common origin in Abraham 'but we must learn to live with our differences.'

Calling Osama bin Laden's radical Islam 'an aberration,' and calling violence against Christians 'totally unacceptable,' Takim argued that it was imperative to 'look at the Koran's whole worldview, seeing it in context.' He offered similar advice to the radicals, urging them to go back to the Koran and avoid interpretations that emerged during periods of conflict. 'We need a Luther to correct abuses,' he said.

Reconciliation won't be easy, he admitted, because 'Muslims know very little about Christianity and Judaism. 'Reconciliation begins by talking together, and avoiding demonizations.' He expressed a deep concern that the void created by the September 11 terrorist attacks could be filled by radicals and extremists unless moderate Christians and Muslims joined hands. 'The votes of the silent majority are being drowned out by the bombs of the vocal minority,' he warned. 'We need global reconciliation or the consequences will be unimaginable.'

Muslims in USA

In a later presentation on Muslims in the USA, Takim said that 'living in a minority is a new phenomenon for Muslims, and there are very few guidelines.' Takim said that 'Islam is grossly misunderstood.' Takim said. Even when Muslims lived with others there was no dialogue, largely because there was no conflict to make it necessary. 'We need to move from attempts at conversion to conversation,' even though the Muslim community is still coming to terms with the language of dialogue, he said.

Acculturation in a Judeo-Christian society presents Muslims with some huge challenges. Assimilation means a degree of acceptance but at a high cost--the loss of identity. Some insulation allows Muslims to maintain identity while still interacting with the culture. Muslim immigrants bring their ancestral traditions, trying to reinterpret those traditions but also displaying resistance to change. African-American Muslims are trying to go back to earlier Islamic and African traditions.

Takim said that a 'reformulation of an Islamic worldview is now underway,' although he admitted that it is still in early stages. 'For most Muslims, to be a good Muslim still means being a good seventh century Arab.' Reconciliation goes hand-in-hand with justice and he wonders, however, why churches aren't crying out against injustices against Muslims. And he warned that the Saudis are spreading a puritanical, fanatical brand of Islam that is infecting youth. The only way forward is more bridge building because, after September 11, 'there is no choice.'

Witnesses from the front lines of conflict

While participants eagerly embraced Takim's vision of moderate Islam, the voices of several witnesses described a more violent side of Islam.

Bishop Josiah Idowu-Fearon of the Diocese of Kaduna painted a grim picture of escalating violence in Muslim-dominated northern Nigeria. 'There is deep hatred between Christians and Muslims in my country,' he said in tracing the development of modern Nigeria and the current tensions.

Islam, which arrived in the 10th century, was already established by the time missionaries arrived with British merchants in the mid-19th century. Today the north is 80 percent Muslim, only eight or nine percent Christian. In the central part of the country, the two are evenly balanced. In the south, which is 75 percent Christian, relations with Muslims are 'very, very cordial.'

By 1990 the violence escalated, largely because the military dictator tinkered with the constitution to allow individual states to adopt Shari'ah (the straight path), a comprehensive code of morality and religious duties based on the Koran. As 15 states adopted it in one form or another, the results were incendiary. 'We are sitting on a time bomb,' the bishop warned.

Yet he added, 'There is still hope for Christians and Muslims in Nigeria, even though the situation is not very encouraging. Whether we like it or not, we must find a solution. What is the alternative? If we don't find a solution, there may be no Nigeria in five or 10 years.' The bishop is also worried that Arab nations are expressing an interest in this largest black African nation with 120 million inhabitants.

'I'm known as Mr. Dialogue because I believe in it as a form of witness. But it is becoming a very difficult ministry,' he said, because both sides are largely ignorant about each other. And people are using religion to foment political turmoil because they know Africans are very religious people. He noted that Christians in some areas are beginning to fight back. When he warns against the use of violence, the Christians say, 'Bishop, there is no third cheek.'

Indonesia on the brink

Waving a fax that he had just received that described a fresh outbreak of violence on the Indonesian Island of Sulawesi, the Rev. Patrick Sookhdeo, international director of the Barnabas Fund, began a chilling description of how the world's largest Muslim nation was sliding toward chaos.

After years in which it had been one of the most tolerant Islamic societies, Indonesia went through a transition in the 1960s when the nation lost its strong central base for its government, Islam gained more power and 'a total of about 30,000 Christians have been killed so far, with another half million homeless,' according to Sookhdeo.

He painted a bleak picture of the future, suggesting that Indonesia might disintegrate into regional factions or even move towards an Islamic state. It is also possible that militant Muslims would call for a wider jihad or war against the West.

There are attempts at reconciliation but the human rights abuses are very real,' he said. And the economic situation is getting substantially worse, with the currency near collapse. He said that Christians are begging for intervention 'but very few have been willing to take up their cause.' He wondered, 'Why on earth is there no outside intervention. In this most devastated area, why the silence? The whole region is extremely volatile and no one is interested.'

During a panel discussion, he said that the USA must take the religious element in worldwide conflicts more seriously and break the link between religion and territory. In an earlier presentation he made the same point, noting that violence has been a part of religions and 'often that violence is linked to power and power is linked to territory. We must honestly face up to our own tradition,' he said. 'It is time for Islam to face up to the strand of violence in it.'

Sookhdeo said that 'Bin Laden is not an aberration,' that he 'uses violence for a specific end. He is convinced that he's engaged in a justifiable war with the West.' He admitted his pessimism about the future and said that he is worried that the West may win the immediate battle but ultimately lose the war against terrorism because it is fueled by anger of what is perceived as an affront by the West to Islamic culture and its support for corrupt regimes.

Glimmers of hope in Sudan?

The gloomy atmosphere of the conference was pierced, if slightly, by a report from Dr. Douglas Johnston, president and founder of the International Center for Religion and Democracy, which has been working in the Sudan for interreligious cooperation.

'Bin Laden changed the game,' he said in his presentation. 'We need a different engagement with cultures of the world. We Americans are perceived as very arrogant. We must acknowledge that religion is a component of most political conflicts in the world today--and it is time to bring religion back into the equation.'

His organization seeks to do precisely that by employing what he calls 'faith-based diplomacy.' It creates cells of peacemakers in countries involved in conflict, providing a base for peace negotiations. In the Sudan, for example, it has built relations of trust with the Khartoum government, encouraging them to take steps toward peace. Trying to move beyond the images of the civil war in the country, he said that life in the Sudan is different than the stereotypes because 'the brand of Islam in the Sudan is very liberal.'

Like other African nations, the Sudan is 'living out the consequences of its colonial history,' suffering from a leadership crisis common to the continent. In addressing the civil war that has been raging for decades, he said that 'there is no innocence to be found. Bad things are happening on both sides. But there is no sign in the Sudan of allegations of a state-sponsored terrorism.'

Injecting a note of reality, Abraham, one of the so-called 'Lost Boys of Sudan,' briefly described his attempts to survive the civil war in the south by fleeing. He is among thousands of children who have been separated from their families, some of them for 15 years or more, looking for safety in Ethiopia and then refugee camps.

Radical ministry of reconciliation

In closing remarks, the Rev. Andrew White, director of International Ministry at Coventry Cathedral in England, said that participants had been able to grapple with the issues in a loving environment. In opening and closing the conference, he offered some suggestions on how to use the terrorist attacks 'as an opportunity for a recommitment to a radical ministry of reconciliation.' Before that can happen, he said it was necessary to avoid political correctness from preventing an honest engagement with the issues and to avoid demonizing each other. 'We must be willing to face up to the wrongs perpetuated by our own tradition,' he argued, and 'realize that there is a spiritual dimension to reconciliation' and offer support for 'all victims of religious conflict and terrorism.'

White also said that reconciliation must be based on truth with forgiveness, the motto of the Community of the Cross of Nails, an 'international network of individuals who share a commitment to a practical vision of reconciliation and a genuine intention to live a disciplined Christian life,' based at Coventry Cathedral.

'We need to be a praying people--and an informed people,' White said. He is encouraged that many international organizations, such as the World Bank, realize that after September 11 'they can's exist on an island, without engaging religious leaders.'

'We have demonized those in our own faith tradition,' he added, demonstrating more willingness to engage the fundamentalist side of Islam than the fundamentalist side of Christianity. 'We need to learn how to re-engage.'

Bishop Arthur Walmsley, retired bishop of Connecticut, brought greetings from Presiding Bishop Frank T. Griswold. Walmsley, who has been asked by Griswold to shape a response by the bishops to 'waging reconciliation,' reported that the bishops will use their annual March retreat to explore the deeper ramifications of a ministry of reconciliation.